The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations - by Martin Foys & Karen Karen Overbey & Daniel Terkla

About the Book

New approaches to what is arguably the most famous artefact from the Middle Ages.

Book Synopsis

In the past two decades, scholarly assessment of the Bayeux Tapestry has begun to consider issues beyond its sources and analogues, dating, origin and purpose, and site of display. This volume demonstrates the utility of more recent interpretive approaches to this famous artefact, especially with regard to newer concepts of gender, materiality, reception theory, cultural criticism, performativity, spatial narrative, New Historicism, and post-structuralism. The essays it contains frame vital issues for the future of Tapestry scholarship: they provide original perspectives, and engage with myriad critical concerns: the (New-) historical layering of meaning, representational systems of gender difference, visuality, memory and architecture, modern obsessions with author-like patronage, post-colonial notions of territory and saintly relics, and the function of historiography and media. An exhaustive bibliography of three centuries of critical writings completes the work.

Review Quotes

This volume admirably demonstrates a fresh range of expert thinking. [It]is uniformly of interest and good value.-- "JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL ARCHAEOLOGY"

Unearth[s] valuable new facts.-- "ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW"